


Slow Dances

by Cawaiiey



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Death, Loss, M/M, Wedding, there's a lot of allusions to Easy Dances so please read that first!, this is a sequel to Easy Dances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 01:06:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9099481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cawaiiey/pseuds/Cawaiiey
Summary: Rhythms can be upset so easily.
They slow. They stop.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is,,, the first um,,, angst fic i've written in a very long time. so here we go. some. angst....

It started like a dance.

Counted in quarter time, beats of one-two-three-four, as they settle together. There’s no distance between them, as they sweep through the years like they were a ballroom floor. Hanzo’s internal walls are broken down with every beat of his heart in time with McCree’s, and McCree’s trepidation is overstepped with every step they take together. They stitch their hearts onto their sleeves to wear for each other, as they dance to a rhythm only they hear. 

When they’d first gotten together, it was difficult. Hanzo, with his insecurities and his stilted view of his own self-worth, and McCree, with a head full of misguided fantasies of chasing redemption through justice and a deep, potent rage that threatened to spill over with every battle, had to learn to dance to a different song. Hanzo had to speed up, to match McCree’s pace with how fast he wanted to go, and McCree slowed his rhythm so as to not scare Hanzo with his overeager nature. From double time to quarter time; from eight counts for four. 

The rhythm they made together becomes the perfect backbeat. 

Weeks turn into months, months into years. Battles are fought, and won, or lost, and they dance through it all. Arguments are had, disagreements and shouting matches, which would break down other couples. But they change the rhythm every time and learn to dance to a better tune. Rather than step around it, they learn, they grow, they change together. Whereas they were dancing to songs composed only of their heartbeats, there is a veritable orchestra playing for them now. 

When white starts to overtake Hanzo’s hair, so that there is more salt than there is pepper in the strands, McCree is hit with how absolutely gorgeous his archer is. His hair is being spun in silver now, breaking apart the tawny locks on his head, but he looks nowhere near as good as his lover does. Crow’s feet and wrinkles do nothing to mar the regal expanse of his face, and every line is just another blemish for McCree to kiss. 

The orchestral accompaniment to their dance ceases for a moment. They pause. Hanzo is forty-five now. McCree is not far behind him. 

Their lives are dangerous. The things they do could result in death some day. They both are aging so fast, the stress of life-and-death situations taking their toll on them in more ways than one. McCree is tired, of many things, but he’s tired of one thing in particular; dancing around a question he’s had on his mind for quite some time now. 

With only the rapid beat of his heart spurring him on, he falls to one knee. 

He hasn’t prepared a ring; Hanzo likely wouldn’t wear one anyways. Too easy to lose, too easy to catch on his bowstring. They’ll think of something to replace it, something that won’t be lost so easily, that won’t endanger them. 

He takes Hanzo’s hand in his. The air off the Alboran sea is cool on his skin, which is overheated, now that he realizes it. Gibraltar is as good a place as any to propose. It’s their home. McCree takes a deep breath, the salty air burning his throat, pressing his thumbs into the top of his lover’s palm. He massages the skin there, trying to work up the courage to say it. To ask.

It takes a moment to squeeze it past the lump that’s in his throat, but he manages. Somehow.

“Hanzo Shimada. We’ve been datin’ for an awfully long time now-”

“Yes, I will.”

“-and I know this is certainly not, uh, the most traditional proposal, but I hafta ask-”

“Jesse, I will.” 

“-but, would you do me the honor of-”

“Jesse! I said, I will!” 

“-marrying me?” 

He tilts his head up, waiting for an answer, to find that Hanzo is smiling down at him. There’s a hint of red to his eyes, which are wet with unshed tears. They glimmer in the evening sun, which is starting to sink below the horizon line, like stars on his lash lines. McCree’s never seen such a pretty sight before. 

“Sugar?” 

Hanzo barks out a wet laugh. Tears spill over the curve of his cheekbones. He wants to cup his face and wipe the tracks away with his thumbs. His lover smiles like the sun, bright and open, and it takes what little breath McCree was able to suck in past the lump of trepidation in his throat away. 

“You silly cowboy. If you had been listening, I already said yes three times,” Hanzo teases, smiling even as more tears drip out of his eyes. He takes his hand from McCree’s grip and cups his face, pulling him up as Jesse struggles to get off of his knee. Hanzo hauls him in, rubbing the curves of their noses together, and Jesse’s hands find their place on his face. The orchestra starts to play again when Hanzo leans in and whispers, “but I’ll say it again. Yes, Jesse McCree, I will marry you.” 

The dance starts again as their lips find each other. 

Genji is Jesse’s best man at the wedding, and Lena and Lucio are his groomsmen. Hanzo chooses Satya, Mei, and Amelie to be his, technical, ‘bridesmaids’. Zenyatta officiates. It’s a quiet affair on base. They don’t exchange rings, but Jesse kisses his lover’s left ring finger and promises that they’ll get something done about them soon. Hanzo does the same. Their vows are short and sweet, knowing they tell each other much more in private than they do in the public eye. Not that it matters; most of the team ends the ceremony in tears. Jesse swears he hears Reyes blubbering like a baby in one of the back rows. 

Lucio, of course, is the DJ at the reception. Everyone cooked something from their culture to bring to the table. There’s a makeshift dance floor set up in the rec room, and they take advantage of it. Gabriel and Jack dance together, for the first time in, apparently, a long time, because they step on each other’s toes more than once and argue about who was supposed to lead. They’re smiling the whole time though, more than anyone has seen them smile before. Genji manages to convince his master to join him for a song or two. Zarya and Mei, with their tremendous height difference, make a cute couple. Ana and Reinhardt, Lucio and Hana, Tracer and Emily (who was brought on base just for tonight) and Amelie; all of them partake in the delightful mood together. 

And, of course, there’s Hanzo and McCree. 

They get the floor to themselves first, with everyone eagerly watching from the sidelines. The last time he danced, McCree had two left feet, but that was back in Blackwatch’s days. He swears he sees Reyes shifting nervously from his spot next to Jack. 

The music starts up, slow, soft, sweet. Hanzo’s arms wind around Jesse’s shoulders. McCree rests his hands on the curve of his now-husbands’s waist over the soft silk of his traditional wedding kimono. They start to sway to the rhythm of the orchestral song that Lucio is playing for them. 

For all their time figuratively dancing together, they’re practiced enough to be able to dance to an actual, tangible rhythm. McCree takes the first step forward, and he flashes back to all those hat tips and winks he’d showered Hanzo with, and Hanzo retreats. Then he presses forward, stepping with the opposite foot, sly smiles and coy looks, and McCree retreats. 

Their feet chase each other like they used to, all those years ago, while the song starts to crescendo. The strings join in as McCree spins his husband in a circle with one hand; the drums start when Hanzo dips his cowboy towards the floor. They sway, they spin, they laugh, they dance. They live and they love, finding it in the arms of one another. Hands grip calloused hands, fingers once drenched in blood lace together. Hearts that should have stopped beating long ago echo each other’s song. Hanzo finds redemption in McCree’s arms; McCree finds justice in Hanzo’s smile.

They kiss as the violin plays a final note. 

It’s not the first, and it certainly won’t be the last. For a love long searched for, found at ages long past their prime, it’s the youngest and sweetest thing that either of them have ever experienced. 

And it continues to be, even when their bones creak and their hair is void of the color it used to be. Even when they retire from active duty, and the years together become decades. They love, they live, they continue to dance.

It slows to eighth time. Counts of one, two, three, four- 

Hanzo advances.  _ The dragon keeps him young _ , he’d once said to McCree, when they were lounging on their bed together. And he was right; those spiritual beasts residing in him keep him young and healthy, even if his outward appearance belies his age.

The same cannot be said for his husband. 

Rhythms can be upset so easily. 

A slip, a misstep, in the form of blood on the carpet. Hunched over in their room. Coughing crimson into his hand. A reminder of mortality. A reminder of the fleeting, the momentary, how they cannot live their lives dancing around the concept that one of them, someday, will leave this world.

“Jesse!”

Hanzo Shimada is a selfish man. He wants to keep his husband here for eternity. He scoops him up in his arms, wondering where he’s finding his strength in his old age, and rushes him to the infirmary. Angela takes one look at him, demands Hanzo leaves Jesse on an examination bed, and shuts the door on him after ushering him out of the room. 

The minutes feel like hours, and the hours feel like days. He paces the room like a caged beast, dread rising in his midsection like icy bile. It’s hard to dance when only one person is present, but he tries. To remember the rhythm that he and Jesse made for themselves, to know that this isn’t the end, it  _ can’t  _ be, they said until death does them part but he is not ready, McCree cannot be ready, he  _ cannot- _

“Hanzo. Please come here.” 

Angela’s voice is like that of an executioners.

“He’s not going to make it, Hanzo.” 

And there is the guillotine. 

“What do you mean? You brought my brother back from certain death, and you cannot do this? You cannot save him? You are- You can- You could- You  _ cannot- _ ”

“I cannot do anything for old age and decades of bad habits, Hanzo. I will leave you two to your goodbyes.” 

Hanzo shakes when she walks past him, barely restraining the urge to grab her by the lapels of her medical jacket and demand that she do whatever she can to bring his Jesse back from the brink of death. 

Rhythms can be upset so easily. 

He takes the first step forward into the room. It smells like antiseptic. It’s so  _ wrong _ . He takes another step forward. Jesse has his head turned to look at him, hands resting over his midsection. He takes another step forward. Jesse smiles weakly at him. He takes another step forward. Jesse opens his mouth to speak. 

“Hanzo, darlin’.”

It’s barely a croak, unbefitting of a man so strong.

Where had the dance gone so  _ wrong _ ?

Hanzo climbs into the hospital bed, fitting himself against his husband’s side. McCree wraps an arm around his shoulder, and Hanzo fits his arm around his lover’s waist. He’s so much colder than he usually is. Hanzo doesn’t want to think about what that means. 

“Jesse, please. You. You can’t-”

“I’m sorry darlin’. You can forgive me, right?” 

“Do not speak like you are dying. We can. We can fix this.” 

He’s quiet for a moment. Hanzo doesn’t realize he’s crying until a metal thumb is swiping through the wetness on his cheeks.

“It’s my time.” 

Hanzo chokes on a sob as he buries his head in the medical gown that his lover is swathed in. Even through the sterile fabric, he can smell the cinnamon and cloves that make up his husband’s scent, the aroma that follows him everywhere. He sucks in stuttering gasps, lungfuls of the smell, trying to imprint it on his mind for as long as he possibly can.

“Oh, Hanzo,” Jesse soothes in that rasp that is wholly unbecoming of his personality, “my darlin’. My honey. I love you so much. In these years you’ve spent with me, you’ve made me the happiest man alive. Y’make even an old geezer like me feel young again.” 

“P-Please, stop,  _ Jesse _ , I  _ need _ you-”

“I’m so glad I got to spend as long as I have with you. I love you.”

His voice is steadily getting softer, weaker, with every word he says.

“Jesse, Jesse, Jesse-”

“I love you.”

“Jesse,  _ no _ , no-”

Counts of five, six, seven eight. It slows to eighth time.  

“Thank you.” 

Hanzo can’t stop the sobs wracking his form as he holds onto Jesse. His chest rises once, settles, and doesn’t rise again. A rhythm that Hanzo has danced to for decades taking its last stuttering beats before it stops.

Rhythms can be upset so easily.

They slow. They stop.

One advances, the other retreats.

Hanzo advances. Jesse retreats. 

They love. One of them lives, for years, decades, without the other, with only a promise that he’d whispered while curled up with his dying husband. 

“I love you too, Jesse McCree. Wait for me.”

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i did that im sorry i cried while writing this im sorry,,,


End file.
